The time portal was a mysterious gateway discovered by Will Robinson and Robot.
History[]
While out exploring on the unknown planet, Will Robinson and the Robot take refuge in a cage while fleeing from mothasaur creatures. Inside the cave, they discover an unusual device which shows Will a moment from his past - himself playing in his room on Earth. He wonders if the portal could be gateway to the past and thus a way to save everyone from the 24th Mission who is stranded on the unknown planet.
He returns to the Jupiter 2 and brings his sisters Penny Robinson and Judy to the cave. They agree with his proposal to test it out. He steps through the portal once his younger self steps away from the room and finds himself in the past. He sees a moment from his past family life and then returns to the cave, but not before taking one of his favorite action figures, Captain Quasar, from his room.
After his return, Penny decides to try out the portal next, but things go terribly wrong. She returns from her visit with candy taken from a store, but before she, Will and Judy can enjoy it, everything changes. She is no longer present and Will now has two sets of memories - one of things as they were, and one of a new reality in which Penny never joined the 24th Mission because she was caught on camera stealing.
Will realizes that Penny has changed the past and decides to try to use the time portal to set things right. He travels back in time himself and finds Penny before she can steal from the store. He explains to what happened and they make for the portal, but before they can reach it, they are attacked by aliens who pull them away into their world along with the Robot. The robots explain that the portal is their technology and the planet is a dumping ground for their spent fuel. They never expected anyone to be there due to the planet's proximity to the black hole. They give the two a choice of either staying in a sort of alien zoo, or death, but Will makes the Robot "be bad" in order to escape. The Robot then pulls them back through the portal, but sends them back to a time just before Will ever used the portal, averting the entire chain of events.
Behind the scenes[]
The time portal appears only in Lost in Space: Return to Yesterday, a novel based on the characters and situations of Netflix's Lost in Space. Time travel also appears in the sequel novel, Infinity's Edge, but in an unrelated way. When Worlds Collide, a comic included in the Lost in Space Ultimate Collection , a similar portal appears on the Robot's crashed ship, leading to another planet decades in the past in a different reality. The events of this comic seem to happen before Return to Yesterday.